It’s the end of November and the light is woolly, the forest barren, still, out behind the Dolman place, perched on a ridge in North Gower, Ont.

The house is tidy, quiet enough to hear a newspaper rustling. Sandi Dolman, 62, is at the kitchen table talking about her son Neil, 33, because talking about Neil is all she can do now. He died April 1 from an overdose of fentanyl, another victim of a horrible mistake.

What, she was asked, was the first real sign that Neil had a drug problem? “When the police turned up at the door and told us he was dead.”

Fentanyl is the new menace on the illicit drug scene. Alone or with alcohol, it killed 198 in Ontario in 2015, more than twice as many as heroin (82), making it easily the most deadly opioid. (Ottawa had at least 11 fentanyl deaths last year.) About 10 days ago, Ottawa Public Health launched an awareness campaign full of words like “deadly” and “grave” and “massive.”

It’s such a silent killer that nobody knows about

Parents like the Dolmans are discovering there are two terrifying things about illicit or bootleg fentanyl: users often don’t even know they’ve consumed it — or what potency — and overdoses can mimic a deep sleep, masking the need for immediate medical attention. A sleep from which you never wake up.

“That’s the biggest thing I want to get across,” says Dolman, mother of three other grown children. “It’s such a silent killer that nobody knows about.”

This is what happened to Neil, who worked as an interlock landscaper in summer and at snow removal in the winter.

Sandi says Neil, who was living with them in North Gower, showed up at a house in Ottawa on the morning of April 1 to meet with a friend and co-worker who did counter-top work.

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It was early, about 6:30, she said, and it appears Neil may have been up all night. (To this day, his last hours are something of a blank.) He seemed fine but overly tired, she said, and fell into a deep sleep on a couch. He could not be woken about 90 minutes later and, at the next check before noon, there was a small amount of blood near his nose. He was gone.

The autopsy found 26 nanograms of fentanyl per millilitre of blood, about eight times levels that are potentially fatal. There was also a trace of cocaine. Sandi believes her son was only an occasional drug user who was sold or given cocaine laced with a highly potent mix of fentanyl.

“We know he had no idea. If he had any idea, he would have stayed away from it. He did not want to die this way.”

While it’s legally prescribed as a painkiller, often in patch form, fentanyl is being bootlegged and mixed with other drugs (oxycontin or percocet) for street sale, possibly in doses 50 or 100 times stronger than heroin. Addiction workers are calling the situation across Canada a crisis, as paramedics in bigger cities are dealing with overdoses on a nightly basis.

One of the speakers on the city’s new website is Leslie McBain, a British Columbia mother who lost her son, Jordan, to an overdose in 2014, a tragedy that led to the creation of a support network, Moms Stop the Harm (momstoptheharm.com). She’s heard many stories like that of Neil Dolman: a deep sleep, unusual snoring, gurgling noises, an inability to wake up.

(The most serious side effect of fentanyl overuse is that breathing simply stops.)

“I just tell parents to be vigilant about any changes in behaviour, to any stories that don’t make sense, to new and questionable friends,” she said from Pender Island.

B.C. is the hot spot in Canada for the fentanyl crisis — more than 330 died from January to September, up 200 per cent from 2015 — and McBain does not believe the problem is subsiding.

If he had any idea, he would have stayed away from it. He did not want to die this way

“I hate to say it, but I think we’re in the middle of it,” she said. “There is huge, huge money to be made in the black market with fentanyl.”

McBain speaks often in schools, to students as young as Grade 8, and one of the simple messages to young people is to avoid any intoxicant in pill or powder form.

The city, The Ottawa Hospital and the Royal Ottawa are keen to remind drug users to have ready a kit of naloxone, an antidote that reverses the effects of opioids. The drug is now fairly readily available, and free, at many pharmacies.

The Dolman family, meanwhile, is left with memories of a young man who loved the outdoors — skiing, fishing, travelling — and thoughts of what might have been.

We flip through the pages of the funeral book and there we see dozens and dozens of signatures, photos of a handsome young man, always well-groomed, an uncle holding a baby, a teenager in a Sens hoodie, a dandy in a wedding party having a blast.

“We need to educate people,” says Sandi. “Ontario and Ottawa need to wake up and understand that the crisis is happening here.” She’d like to remind parents it isn’t just hardened drug addicts at risk.

“For the longest time, we’ve been talking about drug addicts. Well, it’s not just drug addicts.”

It surely isn’t. The typical victim is a male between 18 and 40. There was a time, not so long ago, she reminded, that coming-of-age teenagers would sneak off to house parties and drink beer and try pot. What great ill came of that? Now there are pills around, with unseen poisons, and unlucky young people who don’t get a second chance.

“That’s the hard part, that he’s gone,” says Sandi. “And I don’t want anybody to have to go through what we’ve been through.”

And we end by walking across the sloped lawn and into the near forest for a photograph. It is dreary and lifeless out here, and will be for weeks, until another spring, when many precious things, but not all, are reborn.